The Top Of The Mountain

I hope my previous post made sense, after I'd typed it, it felt rather convoluted and messy so if you couldn't make top or tail of it just let me know and I'll type it up again. Guess they can't all be great posts...

Anyway, I started seeing a psychologist quite a while go, and he's a great guy who's helped me a lot over the last few years, but one of the things I'll never forget him telling me was that I spend too much time at the top of the mountain. You see, I think. A lot, about anything and everything, and one of the first things I dealt with in my sessions was the fact that I over intellectualize everything. He always used to tell me to relax. And for a while I forced myself to do that, but it's not who I am.

I'm a thinker, and in my opinion being a thinker is only a problem if you don't experience emotions. And in the past that has been my problem, but not today. These days I think I have a good balance between thinking and feeling, but I still get told I spend to much time at the top of the mountain.

I was talking to my psychiatrist and he said spending time thinking and questioning life and society is a good thing, but you need to also relax. He said I should drink more and smoke some pot. Now, I'm not likely to smoke pot any time soon, but I have been making a concerted effort to relax a bit more. Unfortunately for me, that means falling into mediocrity.

Today I met with Andre, my psychologist, and he said that I should be doing what 21 year olds do, which is drinking / smoking, hanging out with friends and working / studying. You see, I have extremely high expectations of myself, and so do my parents, and the fact that I'm 21 and still don't have any sort of degree really upsets them a lot, and at the moment I'm not doing anything because I'm not sure what field I should be working in, which upsets them even more.

But for me, if you're not pushing yourself forward you're wasting time. Andre reckons that I should be doing what ever other 21 year old does, and then wait a few years because invariably what you were doing has morphed and changed into a career, and by the time you're 35 you'll have some sort of career, and then you can look at things again. But that just doesn't seem right to me.

I don't know. Maybe my expectations are overly high. Maybe I should be normal, it seems to work for most other people. Maybe what I should be doing is just getting a dead end job and letting it run its course, who knows what will happen. At this point I'm feeling fairly hopeless, not knowing which way is right, which way is wrong. I want to do my best, but if my best means making the 'right' decision that's not really possible.

I guess being yourself is what you should be doing, but that never really works. Idealists tell you that you should be your own person, but society doesn't work like that, and in my experience you're hindering yourself by doing that. I'm just so tired of fighting, and there is no light in any of the tunnels, or so it seems. Which way is forward? Is that even the right direction?

So what do you think? Is waiting for a miracle the answer? Or is pushing forward the way to do? Do we need to live up to our expectations, or should we live and let life happen around us? Is mediocrity the answer to success, or is going against the grain the way to the top? Do you even want to be at the top? Maybe it's time we all went to the top of the mountain...